Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/179

 construction and furniture of their houses, and in the management of their farms, imitate the whites, and appeared to be progressing towards civilization, were it not for their baneful attachment to whiskey. Towards the level of the river a darkish bed of slate-clay appeared, having a dip of not more than 10 to 15°; beneath which occurred a slaty sandstone, containing a little mica, and somewhat darkened apparently by bitumen. It likewise abounded with organic reliquiæ, among which were something like large alcyonites, sometimes the thickness of a finger, but flexuous instead of rigid, and collected together in considerable quantities; also, a moniliform fossil allied to the Icthyosarcolite of Desmarest, though not very distinctly, being equally flexuous with the above, and fragments resembling some species of turrilites, but no shells of any other description, besides these, were visible.

The insects which injure the morel cherry-tree so much in Pennsylvania, I perceive, here occasionally act in the same way upon the branches of the wild cherry, (Prunus virginiana).

6th.] This morning the river appeared rapidly rising to its former elevation, being nearly bank full, almost a mile in width, and but little short of the Mississippi in magnitude. The current was now probably four or five miles in the hour, and so difficult to stem, that after the most laborious exertions since day-light, we were still in the evening five miles below the Dardanelle, having made only about 10 miles {123} from the Galley. We have had the low ridge, which originated this fanciful name, in sight nearly the whole day. On the same side of the river, but more distant, a magnificent empurpled mountain occupies the horizon, apparently not less than 1000 feet high, forming a long ridge or table, and abrupt at its southern ex